1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to means for creating a billing statement for a publishing business automatically and digitally with links to associated advertising copy and the published page containing such advertising copy.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Publishers of periodicals and dailies derive significant revenue from printing advertisements in their publications. Traditionally, the method of billing the advertiser, or customer, for the publication of the customer's advertisement is to send a billing sheet, or statement, listing the date of publication, an advertisement identifier, and the charge for the advertisement. Along with each billing line item is included a copy of the advertisement and a copy of the actual page or pages on which the advertisement was published. These hard copies of the advertisements and page are often called tearsheets. The tearsheets were, in the past, manually created by persons who gathered the physical tearsheets and attached them to the billing statements, resulting in a great expenditure of labor. Also, the billing statement created in this way can become physically bulky and unnecessarily hard to handle and expensive to deliver to the customer.
Therefore, there exists a need to automate this billing process and digitize it to make for easier storage, retrieval, and delivery.